Thanks for your interest, folks. The airplane is a longer-than-usual PW Impact with Igor's flap mechanism and autothrottle. Thus it is pretty similar to the Predator Flaming Dog Head Airplane. The notch at the back is for the rudder. It's potentially coupled to the elevator and is one of four things that get addressed after the airplane gets completely trimmed. Wing thingies are another. Nose tinkering was to line up the prop on the spinner backplate. This shaft doesn't yet have flats milled on it per Dean Pappas's suggestion, which saves about an hour each spinner installation. The insignia is from the Kosciuszko Squadron, a long and wonderful story involving West Point, Thomas Jefferson, King Kong, and the Battle of Britain. Yes, this is the fifth real stunt plane I've built.
I said that I thought he'd use the PW micro-screw adjustment method, but Howard said he'd designed such a device, but it needed much more engineering. If I understand that phrase correctly, that's about 6 months worth of engineering, 2 months of mold making, a month of making test parts, and maybe as much as 32 minutes of actual layup of the production part.
Steve
Not exactly. I said that my design was stupid. I spent a week trying to get the binds out before I discovered that they were designed in. I reverted to lovely components made by Tony Huber and Derek Moran. Even with the "logarithmic" flaps, the controls are the freest of any stunt plane I've built.
Today's flying was mostly worrying about whether I'd done anything else fatally stupid and whether the electrical stuff is getting adequate cooling. I felt some transients that could either have been leadout strands breaking or bugs hitting the lines. I summoned Pete Ferguson, who came to the field to do a pull test. He pulled it 48 lb., so I guess it was bugs. I also heard a snazzz sound which sounded like the motor coming loose. This turned out to be a label coming off the motor. I wonder if the motor got too hot for the adhesive. So far today I've taped and untaped the flaps twice. I went to see a movie about Lech Walesa this evening, but couldn't sit through the whole thing because Pete brought me a 20-oz. cup of coffee from Starbucks when he came to help me pull test.